How To Buy A Landscaping Business
Also, other statistics show that the American landscaping market will grow at a compound annual rate of no less than 4.5% from 2020 through 2025. With an increased demand for landscape services in recent times as younger households are steadily favoring gardening and lawn care activities, you can expect your business to maintain a steady growth regardless of competition.
how to buy a landscaping business
Of course, there is still an option of operating this business all year long. You can offer winter services like snow removal to help increase profits during the off-season. This also helps to keep on talent for the summer months.
The chief appeal here is that with a sound business strategy that regards different annual demand cycles, you can build a powerful magnet for attracting recurrent revenue and steady talent in your company
A significant trend to understand in any business is its potential for growth in the months and years ahead. The landscaping industry particularly promises steady demand from clients as it offers many services that are considered necessary aesthetically or otherwise.
As economic activity rebounds and people return to workplaces from the late-period setbacks experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there will be a surge in demand for landscaping services for beautification.
Your acquired landscaping business stands a decent chance of surviving if you expand your business services. You can expand by rendering some ancillary landscaping services like fertilizing, pest control, and more.
A new landscaping business requires new equipment, building a solid customer base, sourcing employees, and many more. In contrast, an existing landscaping company can save you from all of those or minimize the stress involved in getting these things done.
Buying a landscaping business helps you channel your energy and drive to other aspects of business growth, such as marketing or service upgrading. Meanwhile, building a new one divides your attention as you strive to achieve too many things at a time. This may, at times, prove daunting and even discouraging.
Landscaping machinery/pieces of equipment are subject to wear and tear. So in your evaluation of the business, pay attention to when the equipment was bought, how often they are being used and serviced.
This factor needs to be carefully considered against the type of landscaping services you wish to render. At best, you should aim for a landscaping company with a mix of residential and commercial clients. This can ensure you have clients all year long and provide you with a blend of small-scale and large-scale landscaping contracts.
In recent times, the demand for landscaping services has increased and even expanded to include more service options. Owning a landscaping business provides you with more potential for growth and revenue build-up than many home service businesses. Are you looking to buy a landscaping company? Start here. Get guidance and proven systems to acquire and grow the company.
Acquira is a business acquisition in a box service. We help entrepreneurs buy businesses and we invest in them and their chosen businesses. We are here to help ensure that each business we work with is posed to make the biggest positive impact possible for its owners, employees, and community.
Owning a landscaping business often leads to steady profits. However, starting a lawn care business from scratch can pose lots of challenges. You have to buy equipment, establish a customer base, hire employees, and perform a variety of other functions.
Do you want to get out in the sun and perform landscaping services yourself? You absolutely can. Many successful lawn care companies are one-person operations. Working by yourself is absolutely an option.
The current owner of the business might be an amazing person. The equipment might be top-of-the-line. Existing customers are a solid mix of residential and commercial clients. Everything about the business, at least superficially, appears excellent.
In some cases, you can get a good deal if someone is forced to sell a business quickly. However, make sure their financial issues are truly unrelated to their business. If the previous owner has barely been able to earn a living, buying a business on the assumption you can increase profits is a big risk.
As a rule, the more involved an owner is in the production of revenue, the less valuable the company. More than likely, it's not possible to back yourself out of all day-to-day operations. However, you should strive to minimize how much the business depends on you to carry the load.
Buyers love long-term contracts. They protect the business from volatility and allow them to predict revenue and earnings years in advance. From an operations standpoint, they also allow you estimate more effectively and plan denser routes for your crews.
Invest in a nice website, improve your search engine optimization (SEO), and search for areas to incorporate your brand into daily business activities (logos on vehicles, shirts, etc.). As younger demographics become homeowners, more of your customers will be searching the web for their landscaping professionals.
Selling your business to an individual is usually more profitable than selling to a competitor. This is because an individual buyer needs to purchase every aspect of your company as it is running today.
If your business value is in the $400,000 to $2,000,000 range, an individual buyer is the most likely candidate. However, as the business size and purchase price increase, the pool of individual buyers shrinks.
A strategic buyer is a business that operates in an industry related to your business. For landscaping, that could be a property management company, an irrigation & stormwater services company, or even another landscaping company outside of your service area.
The PEG buys a majority stake of your company, while you retain a minority position and continue to operate the business in some capacity. The purpose of this partnership is to increase the value of the business and sell it later down the road, usually to a strategic buyer or larger Private Equity Group. Selling to a Private Equity Group would enable you to sell a portion of your business at today's value - to "take some chips off the table". You negotiate a fair salary, help grow the company with the financial and operational aid of the PEG, and eventually sell your minority stake when the PEG decides to sell - theoretically at a much higher overall value (which in some cases turns out to be more valuable to you than the original sale).
Wondering how long it will take to sell your landscaping business? 51% of business owners think it will take five months. However, research suggests it takes six to eight months on average, depending on a number of factors.
One of the most important factors is size - the larger your business, the smaller pool of qualified buyers you will have, and the more likely a buyer is to request a longer due diligence period.
Wondering how much business brokers charge? Like many things when it comes to selling a business - there's no simple answer. Nearly every business and every situation is unique. Ultimately the answer boils down to the size of your business and the type of broker you will work with to sell it. For "Main Street" businesses (those doing less than $1 million in revenue), the price will most likely be 10% of the sale price.
Buying a lawn care business or landscaping company can be an exciting adventure! Enjoy the ride!If you have any questions about these recommendations, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or drop us a message here on our website.
The best mistakes are the ones made by others. Learn from the business mistakes that have been made by other landscapers; including management errors like improper hiring practices or calculation of labor needs, technical errors like poor planning and design, and entrepreneurial errors like chasing bad contracts. Learning from others who have gone before you in the landscaping businesses can protect your investment in your business.
Analyzing mistakes gives you a unique opportunity to fix and prevent errors in your business. Reflect on previous misfortunes and discover creative solutions, innovative transitions, competitive advantages and profitable returns.
Equipment suppliers are a great resource for landscape businesses. Involving a landscape equipment rental company and their knowledgeable staff in the estimation process can help improve your strategy. Their years of experience in knowing what equipment will be needed for a job, the time required and any incidental costs associated with rental fees and operating expenses can be priceless protection against forgetting to include certain time- and material-saving tools.
A major mistake many new landscaping businesses make is tying up available cash or lines of credit in large purchases like new trucks, trailers and labor-saving machinery. Becoming cash strapped early on in the life of a business can be a fatal mistake. While it might look professional and impressive to roll out shiny new equipment, those items will cost a business tens of thousands of dollars in cash outlay, even if they are heavily financed.
Having cash or credit free to cover emergencies or interruptions in business gives you considerable security. Cash tied up in purchased equipment is difficult to liquidate quickly, and doing so may cause you to suffer considerable loss.
Many landscape businesses own or lease their skid steers. However, attractive rental options are available as there is a tremendous range of these versatile machines and their available attachments. What can be a costly mistake is to purchase specialty attachments, rather than renting them. Attachments are labor-saving devices for specific jobs and can be identified for occasional use during the planning phase of a project.
Often, landscape businesses make costly mistakes by attempting their own equipment maintenance and repairs. Rental equipment is repaired and maintained in tip-top shape by the supplier. They employ professionals who know this machinery intimately. Servicing expenses are built into the rental price and eliminate any costly surprises that can pop-up in the middle of a job. 041b061a72